Maasai festival and Rwanda!

My lifelong dream of coming to Rwanda has been realized. I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Kigali, and it is pouring rain outside! But let me start with yesterday. After visiting the Maasai on Sunday, Father Antipas and I were invited to a big Maasai festival, an opportunity I could only dream of. After another day of teaching on Monday, Father Antipas and I set off for one of the bomas in Lekremuni, a huge Maasai village. I had no idea what to expect, I only knew that one of the local Maasai warriors was being welcomed into the class of elders, thus the celebration was an initiation of sorts. These festivals don't happen very often, and tourists are never invited, so I was really honored to be attending. Father Antipas allowed me to drive which was an experience in and of itself. Sitting on the right side of the car, and driving on the left side of the road is tricky, especially considering that there is really no speed limit, and very little organization to the way people drive. Every time I would pass one of the dala dalas, whizzing by me at a reckless rate of speed, I shuddered, not used to having an oncoming car pass on the right. Once we were on the dirt road, the driving is really fun! Offroading! We arrived at the village around 11, and things hadn't really gotten started yet. The men and women of the Maasai are kept very separate, and I knew something very special was going on, because a big cooking area was set up off to the side, and it was the men that were cooking! Apparently, only the men are allowed to slaughter the meat and cook it for festivals. We spent a while hanging out with the young men, or warriors as they call themselves. Most had on the tradition blue, red, and purple fabrics draped over their bodies, and the signature tire tread shoes. They were a mixture of impressed and amused at the fact that I, too, was wearing a pair of authentic Maasai shoes! The cow was slaughtered, dismembered, and the blood was saved in a pot, that's all I'll say about that! Huge pieces of the cow were skewered on sticks, and set up in a circle around the big fire. Gigantic pots of rice were also being cooked over smaller bonfires, and there were a few children that were eating the scraps from a couple of pots that had already finished cooking. The men were in high spirits, and luckily, very excited to be photographed. After hanging out in the cooking area for a while, we made our way over to the boma of the man whose ceremony was that day. The mud hut was decorated on the outside, many patterns and words were written. They explained that they use burnt ashes and a little water to make a black decorative paint. Once the food was ready, we all sat on the ground, and I was brought a bowl of meat in a thick brown sauce. After they explained to me that it was just meat cooked in blood, nothing else, I was a little hesitant, but surprisingly the taste was really good! I was impressed. There was no silverware used, and each bowl was communal, so there were many hands in the bowl I was holding. As weird as it sounds, sharing my food with the men made me feel very welcome. After we ate, we started to hear the distinctive singing and screaming of various Maasai groups in the distance. When I looked around, there were large groups of people coming from several different directions, each headed by some one with a goat or a sheep on a rope lead. These animals serve as an offering from different bomas to the man who was becoming an elder. It was really amazing to watch them each arrive, one at a time - each group comprised of about 50 - 200 people, all singing and dancing, slowly moving toward the boma, and presenting the man and his wives with the animals. Once about 10 different groups arrived, a choir approached. It was made up of about 30 people, apparently the best singers of the community. There were drummers, and everyone was dancing when they arrived - at this point there were at least 1000 people there (I was the only white person!). The songs continued with lots of dancing, and I was in absolute heaven. After about an hour of this, it was around 4 PM, and Father Antipas had to get back to Soweto for a meeting. So we didn't get to see the Maasai men doing their traditional jumping, but they told me that the next time I am in Africa, that I am most welcome if they are having a festival! It was a truly spectacular experience, of which I took tons of photos and video! It was a little depressing on the way out, while I was talking with one of the girls we are trying to sponsor for school about female genital cutting. She explained to me that it is so much a part of the Maasai tradition, and actually, as part of the festival earlier that day, one of the daughters of the man was cut. It just made me think that it is just one more reason to get these young girls educated, and hopefully they will stop that practice altogether! The rest of the night was spent in anticipation of my travel to Rwanda. As I had written about earlier, I was feeling pretty nervous about coming here, not sure what to expect from the woman that was helping me organize my tour (there is only 1 review of her on tripadvisor.com, and it's not a good one!). I checked into the flight this morning around 8 am, and by 10 am, I was off the ground, and on my way to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. I could write a lot more about the check in process at Kilimanjaro airport, and the 'security,' but I'll just say that I basically just walked right onto the flight. Crazy. The flight itself was pretty amazing. When I came in to Tanzania, it was during the, and had been really difficult to see anything on the ground. This morning the view from the plane was beautiful. We flew right by the peak of Kilimanjaro, poking through the clouds, and then over top of Mt. Meru and finally Lake Victoria, before coming into Rwanda. The topography of Rwanda is very different from Tanzania, and this is why they call Rwanda the Land of 1,000 Hills. It's also a lot wetter, and is now in it's rainy season, which hasn't arrived yet for Tanzania. Immediately, when I got to the airport, I knew that Rwanda was very different from Tanzania in every way. The airport is very clean and modern, as is the entire city of Kigali. I was really pleased and surprised that Isabelle, my tour operator, was standing at the gate, holding a sign with my name on it. After five minutes of talking to her, she completely set me at ease. She is so nice, and completely professional, and seems to be very organized and interested in insuring that I have a good experience. We talked about the review on tripadvisor, and she explained the situation. I promised her that I would write a review after my trip, especially because the problem with peer reviewed sites is that most people only write when they have a bad experience. I hadn't made a hotel reservation, and had planned on just showing up at one of the mid range hotels listed in Lonely Planet. But when we got there, it was all booked. I made a split second decision that I would pamper myself for a night, and stay at the more expensive, famous Hotel Rwanda (the original hotel that the movie was about), for a little more than I wanted to spend. Isabelle really came through though when she walked me into the hotel and got me the room for half the price, so it ended up costing what I had expected to pay in the first place! Rwanda feels like a totally different Africa than Tanzania, I can't say that enough. The entire city of Kigali is clean and modern. The roads are paved, and being that Rwanda doesn't allow any plastic bags in the country at all, there is not trash, anywhere. The people are all in western dress, and moving around in an organized way. I really have to keep reminding myself that I am in Africa, it feels like Europe! The hotel is amazing, it's a real treat to be in a luxury hotel room, for less than 100 dollars a night! It is also very strange, considering what took place there! It does also feel a little weird, I've gotten used to no water pressure, suffocating mosquito nets, and uncomfortable beds, no TV, and no air conditioning, but the room I am in has all those things. Tourism has gotten Rwanda back on its feet after the '94 genocide, and they take it very seriously, and it shows! Also, I feel 100% safe here, which is not the case in Tanzania, as much as I love it there! The people all speak french, so it's tough for me to communicate, but I haven't felt unsafe or unwelcome at all. It is impossible to come to Rwanda and not think and talk about the horrible things that took place here in 1994, so before I got all caught up in being a tourist, I went to the Kigali Memorial Centre, which is a museum built around a mass grave. The museum is pretty well known for being really thorough and informative. Not the most fun way to spend the afternoon, but the museum was important for me to experience. I didn't know a lot about the genocide, and I was finally able to understand what lead up to the genocide, and what took place here as the world stood by and did nothing(!!!). It was really difficult, as I moved around the museum, listening to the audio tour, watching short videos, and looking at all the displays. The last stop on the tour were these big cement surfaces, hard to describe. They were a mass grave, where more than 280,000 people are buried. It's hard to really imagine that many bodies, and that many lives lost. But to think that 1,000,000 people were killed in the span of 3 months, in the most gruesome and violent ways imaginable. It was also really difficult to learn about all the turns in which the world community could have gotten involved, and didn't, it just enrages and baffles me. As clean and pristine as Rwanda is, there is still evidence of what happened here. Walking down the street, the only people in Rwanda (in Africa for that matter) that are homeless and begging are children, referred to here as street children. The genocide left hundreds of thousands of children orphaned, and the country still doesn't have the means to help them all. Another fact that I learned that really bothered me - during the genocide, the Inerahamwe (sp?) army used rape as a weapon, especially by men that they knew to be HIV+. So, in the aftermath of the genocide, there is a huge number of women living here in Rwanda that are positive. Unfortunately, being that the country is still recovering, there isn't enough money to provide the necessary medicines to most of them. At the same time, most of the Hutu perpetrators that haven't escaped to The Democratic Republic of Congo, are being held in Arusha, Tanzania, at the war tribunal. The ones that are HIV positive are being given free medication. How does that make any sense? The perpetrators are being treated, and the victims are left to suffer yet again. In addition to seeing many children that are 'street children' here in Kigali, there are many people with limbs missing, and or huge scars on their faces. So while the country looks to be healed, there are still many wounds that remain, both literally and figuratively. After spending a few hours at the museum, reflecting, crying, thinking, getting angry at the world, being frustrated, I stood outside and looked out at the city. The city is set over several rolling hills, and from where I was standing I could see much of it. I started thinking about how, only 15 years later, these people are thriving, or at least living in peace. What a living message of hope, forgiveness and healing! After the museum, I took care of some business, like getting a new SIM card for my phone, a little grocery shopping, and now I'm here at the internet cafe. I'm so excited to head to Kinigi tomorrow, which is at the base of Volcanoes National Park. If the rest of the trip that Isabelle has put together for me is anything like what today has been, I'm in for a real treat! I have decided that after tomorrow's travel, I will probably go to see the golden monkeys on Thursday, a hike that is a lot less expensive than the gorillas, but in the same general area. The following day, I'm up the mountain to realize my dream, and see the mountain gorillas (I saw the permit today!). I'm really toying with the idea of going to see them the following day as well, but we'll see. I have also decided to extend my stay in Tanzania a little longer, so that I can have one more full week with my students. I will be home in San Francisco on March 22nd, for sure. But here I am in Rwanda! I can't believe I'm here!